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France's aircraft carrier located in real time by Le Monde through fitness app

lemonde.fr

11–20 of 571 posts

Re: France's aircraft carrier located in real time by Le Monde through fitness app

#11
post #2

Is an aircraft carrier's location supposed to be secret? Pretty hard to hide from a satellite I'd imagine.

> Pretty hard to hide from a satellite I'd imagine.

At one time I guessed that too, but I've heard navy people explain that it's actually pretty effective. Imagine saying 'pretty hard to hide in North America from a satellite' - it's actually not hard because the area is so large; there aren't live images of the entire area and someone needs to examine them. Oceans are an order of magnitude larger.

A significant element of security for naval ships is hiding in the ocean. US aircraft carrier planes have a ~500 mi effective radius without refueling; even if you see a plane, all you know is that the ship might be in a ~3,142 square mile area. And remember that to target them, you need a precise target and the ships tend to be moving.

With ML image recognition at least some of that security is lost. Also, the Mediterranean is smaller than the oceans, but the precision issue applies. And we might guess that countries keep critical areas under constant surveillance - e.g., I doubt anything sails near the Taiwan Strait without many countries having a live picture.

Re: France's aircraft carrier located in real time by Le Monde through fitness app

#12
post #2

Is an aircraft carrier's location supposed to be secret? Pretty hard to hide from a satellite I'd imagine.

Many countries do not have ready access to satellite imagery, much less realtime satellite imagery. Iran, for example.

Re: France's aircraft carrier located in real time by Le Monde through fitness app

#14
post #5
post #2

Is an aircraft carrier's location supposed to be secret? Pretty hard to hide from a satellite I'd imagine.

Satellite images are not always real time. Also satellites can be affected by things like cloud cover.

For tracking of military ships it's much better to use radar imaging satellites (e.g. see [0]). They can cover a larger area, see ships really well, and almost not affected by weather.

I will not be surprised if China has a constellation of such satellites to track US carriers and it's why Pentagon keeps them relatively far from Iran, since it's likely that China confidentially shares targeting information with them.

[0]: https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/Coperni...

Re: France's aircraft carrier located in real time by Le Monde through fitness app

#15
post #2

Is an aircraft carrier's location supposed to be secret? Pretty hard to hide from a satellite I'd imagine.

>Is an aircraft carrier's location supposed to be secret?

Precise location, yes. At least in the US Navy this is an important part of the carrier's protection. (Having destroyers between the carrier and potential threats is another.)

Re: France's aircraft carrier located in real time by Le Monde through fitness app

#18
post #5
post #2

Is an aircraft carrier's location supposed to be secret? Pretty hard to hide from a satellite I'd imagine.

Satellite images are not always real time. Also satellites can be affected by things like cloud cover.

Clouds only affect a narrow range of the electromagnetic spectrum. Plenty of satellite constellations use synthetic aperture radar, for example, which can see ships regardless of cloud cover. There are gaps in revisit rates, especially over the ocean, but even that has come way down.

Re: France's aircraft carrier located in real time by Le Monde through fitness app

#20

[flagged]

deploy and do what exactly? Get involved and potentially sacrifice a few UK soldiers to stroke Trumps ego? Sit around and look pretty? Having a carrier there doesn't magically make problems go away.
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